Sandbox campaign logs?

While I get the general idea of dungeon crawl sandbox campaigs and use some elements of sandbox settings for my own campaign, I’ve been puzzled about how such campaigns actually look in practice. I occasionally see advice that GMs should not direct the players to anything and that any story that evolves comes entirely from the players descisions. I have a hard time imagining that, but so far never had any luck in finding actual gameplay reports of such campaigns.

This post is a kind of open call to everyone to pointers where one could maybe find campaign logs and play reports of this type of campaign. Any replies will be highly appreciated.

4 thoughts on “Sandbox campaign logs?”

  1. Tricky. My campaign wiki is full of German stuff, so that’s probably not of much use to you. It’s also mostly in game session reports and the like, very little referee commentary.

    Here’s me thinking about how my current campaign has been going. It has examples of some of the random hooks I threw into my players’ path and what they did with it.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2014-04-17_Crazy_Campaign

    Wilderness, random encounters, and how that informs the sandbox, by Ian Borchardt.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2013-11-26_Wilderness_Encounters

    Cities.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2013-10-23_Settlements_in_Sandboxes

    Treasure.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2013-09-05_Treasure

    Here’s how I reviewed Qelong:
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2013-08-22_Qelong_vs._Points_of_Light
    And here’s how it turned out in actual play:
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2013-10-02_Qelong_in_Play

    Player engagement (the throwing of hooks, I guess?).
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2012-12-11_Player_Engagement

    Hexcrawling.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2012-06-20_Hexcrawl_Procedure

    Tools.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2011-05-05_Tools_for_a_Sandbox_Referee

    Starting.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2011-04-28_My_Sandbox_Starts_With_A_Mission

    How the map grows.
    http://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/2009-12-02_Hexcrawl

    I should collect these links in a new blog post. :)

    I have a “referee manual” that tries to collect it all, in a way.
    http://www.emacswiki.org/alex/Swiss_Referee_Style_Manual

    (It seems that there is no way to sign up for follow-up comments?)

    1. I happen to be German. Hallo! ^^
      So if you got something online somewhere I’d take a look.

      No idea how this susbsrcibing business works. I’m just able to get this site up with an installation script and change the colors of the layout.

  2. My Vikings & Valkyries campaign is a sandbox, albeit of a small scale. The party first arrived to a village where they got to know various locals and got involved in their schemes. Later they decided to go on a raiding trip (actually, they’ve done this twice). In the last couple of sessions they returned to the starting settlement and decided to become involved in local politics again. One of the players married the Jarl’s daughter, then – to later unite the local settlements – sought out a legendary sword. In the process they angered a powerful wizard, whom the party is currently seeking to kill.

    Anyways, you can find the play reports here: http://ynasmidgard.blogspot.hu/search/label/Vikings%20and%20Valkyries
    I try to put little “referee’s notes” in there but sometimes I don’t think I provide the kind of information that would make it interesting; I’ll try harder in the future.

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